38 THE KITTEN AND THE FALLING LEAVES. Through the calm and frosty air Sylph or fairy hither tending— In this wavering parachute. -But the kitten how she starts, In her upward eye of fire! With a tiger-leap half way Now she meets the coming prey, Lets it go as fast, and then Has it in her power again : Now she works with three or four, Like an Indian conjuror; Quick as he in feats of art, Far beyond in joy of heart. Were her antics played in the eye Clapping hands with shout and stare, Of her own exceeding pleasure! THE KITTEN AND THE FALLING LEAVES. 'Tis a pretty baby-treat ; * Yet, whate'er enjoyments dwell Of the silent heart which Nature That your transports are not mine, Even as ye do, thoughtless pair! And I will have my careless season Spite of melancholy reason, Will walk through life in such a way I would fare like that or this, 39 40 SONG. And have faculties to take, Even from things by sorrow wrought, Spite of care, and spite of grief, To gambol with life's falling leaf. WORDSWORTH. B Song. LOW, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man's ingratitude; Thy tooth is not so keen, Although thy breath be rude. Heigh ho! sing heigh ho! unto the green holly: This life is most jolly. Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, As benefits forgot: As friend remember'd not. Heigh ho! sing heigh ho! unto the green holly: Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly : This life is most jolly. SHAKESPEARE. [From "As You Like It."] ND this place my forefathers made for man! A To each poor brother who offends against us Most innocent, perhaps-and what if guilty? By ignorance and parching poverty, His energies roll back upon his heart, And stagnate and corrupt, till, changed to poison, And friendless solitude, groaning, and tears, And savage faces, at the clanking hour, Unmoulds its essence, hopelessly deformed With other ministrations thou, O Nature! To be a jarring and a dissonant thing COLERIDGE. ["Of all our writers of the briefer narrative poetry," says Leigh Hunt, "Coleridge is the finest since Chaucer, and assuredly he is the sweetest of all our poets. Wallis's music is but a court flourish in comparison; and though Beaumont and Fletcher, Collins, Gray, Keats, Shelley, and others, have several as sweet passages, and Spenser is, in a certain sense, musical throughout, yet no man has written whole poems, of equal length, so perfect in the sentiment of music, so varied with it, and yet leaving on the ear so unbroken and single an effect." SAMUEL TAYLOr Coleridge, whose works are unsurpassed for grandeur of imagination and command of expression, was born at Bristol, in 1771, and educated at Christ's Hospital, and afterwards at Cambridge. After a long and chequered career, at one period of which he served as a private in a cavalry regiment, he died at Highgate, in 1834. It is related of him that, on his enlistment, the captain of his troop asked him if he could run a Frenchman through the body. "I do not know," replied the valiant poet, "but he shall run me through the body before I will run away."] |